But shedidneed a man. Not because she couldn’t take care of herself or her sister, not because she was too weak to stand alone, but because everybody deserved to have someone who cared enough to take care. Despite her many struggles to keep the bills paid and get Geneva her therapy and her meds and her schooling and her pastimes, it wasn’tpracticalneed that had made her so miserable. Those things were exhausting, yes, but she was capable of doing them.
It was the going to bed alone every night, crying alone in her room when she felt overwhelmed or disappointed or scared.
Not having a shoulder to lean on, just torest. That was where her need had been.
Cooper had offered his shoulder before she’d offered him a kind word.
He pulled back again, a faint frown now shadowing his beautiful smile. “Hey. What’s going on here?” he asked, nodding at her chest.
Her breast forms. Her bra. Siena didn’t know if she should feel defensive about his question, but the warm glow of her understanding of Cooper’s place in her life gave her a little safe space from which to measure her reaction and hold defensiveness off until it was warranted.
“What do you mean?” She measured her tone as well.
“You don’t need those for me. You know that, right? You are beautiful and hot as fuck, just as you are. Warrior angel.”
Tears pricked at Siena’s nose and eyes, but she blinked them away. “Thank you,” she said and cupped his cheek in her hand. “I can’t explain how much that means, and I believe you. But I’m not wearing them for you. I feel more confident with them in a situation like this.”
“The party?”
She nodded. “A lot of strangers, a lot of beautiful women.”
His smile shifted to something private and understanding. “Need a little more armor.”
“Yeah.”
“You know,” he said as he came in close again. “You’re the most beautiful woman here.”
Siena laughed. “You know what? I’m going to believe you mean that, too, though it is objectively false. But I’m okay with you being a little bit nuts, too.”
She looped her arms over his neck and rose onto her toes to kiss him. He picked her up and set her on a barstool—she hadn’t realized she was that close to the bar—then proceeded to kiss her dizzy. He insinuated himself between her thighs, hooked her legs around his hips, pushed his hands into her hair to hold her head, andfedon her.
Never in her life, not even before, not even with Cooper, had she been kissed like this. It wasn’t especially rough or wild, wasn’t a mauling. It was justcomplete. His entire body alive with need for her. Her entire body alive with need for him.
Sitting in a loud, stinky, bright, brash room, surrounded by partying strangers, Siena and Cooper were entirely alone.
And she knew she was falling in love with him.
Eventually, mundane physical needs like oxygen drove them apart. Panting, Cooper rested his forehead on hers.
“I could get used to this,” he muttered on a breathless chuckle.
“Good.” She hooked her fingers on the back of his neck and held him where he was.
“How’d you feel about me introducing you around? The men here? If I have any kind of a family, it’s them.”
There were so many ways that Cooper framed the lacks and losses in his life as insignificant but still laid bare the need. Siena didn’t think he had any idea how melancholy a statement he’d just made. She herself had almost no family, she and Geneva had enduredso manylosses, but they’d had love. Their mother hadlovedthem. Grammy Joan hadlovedthem. Aunt Krystle, Aunt Carole, and Aunt Maggie hadlovedthem. Geneva and Sienalovedeach other. The loss was more acute, perhaps, when there was love, but the love carried on after the loss.
Cooper hadn’t had that. He’d told her very little about his childhood, but what he’d said, always off-handedly, sketched a picture of a sad, bullied boy struggling through life without much love or support, even at home.
No shoulder to lean on.
So he’d found a family on his own.
“I’d like to meet your family,” she said and kissed his cheek.
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~oOo~